The present invention relates to a blade cleaning apparatus, and more particularly to a blade cleaning apparatus having a blade for cleaning a member, such as the rotating photoconductive drum of an electrophotographic copying machine of the toner image transfer type, the surface of which moves past the blade with residual toner deposited therein, by removing the residual toner from the surface with the edge of the cleaning blade which is held in pressing contact with the surface.
Such a cleaning apparatus has the drawback that when the ambient temperature of the cleaning apparatus itself has risen to about 40.degree. C., the edge of the blade is, during the cleaning operation, vibrated by the movement of the member being cleaned so as to make a noise. Accordingly, cleaning apparatuses of this type are generally provided with means to suppress the noise, for example, a vibration blocking member provided between the blade and the blade holder.
Despite the provision of such an expedient, however, it is impossible to prevent the vibration of the blade edge and, therefore, to completely eliminate the noise. Further it has been experienced that when the ambient temperature is at an elevated level of about 45.degree. C., the noise is so loud as to give a sense of discomfort to the user.
In order to overcome this problem, an apparatus has already been proposed in which the blade holder is provided with a vibration suppressing member which transfers the vibration of the blade to the suppressing member and the vibration is suppressed by interference between the two members. Nevertheless, since the apparatus is adapted to attenuate the vibration by interference, there is a need to retain the suppressing member in a free state and also to make the suppressing member from metal or like material which has a reduced damping effect. Thus the apparatus requires a complex construction and fine adjustment, and is therefore not very useful in practice.